With Washington gridlocked again over whether to raise their taxes, it turns out wealthy families already are paying some of their biggest federal tax bills in decades even as the rest of the population continues to pay at historically low rates.

Deficit spending got just a single mention in President Obama's inaugural address. But the outcome of the the long-running conflict with Republicans over his tax-and-spend policies will help shape the government's role in coming years, not to mention Obama's legacy.

As pundits and politicians rush to sew the year up into a neat little bundle, we decided to look at 2012 from a slightly different angle. Here is our list of the year's worst bets -- six developments that seemed like sure things in January, but were bust by December.

When talking about the groundbreaking pot legalization propositions that passed this month, news anchors can't seem to get through a sentence without giggling. But this is a serious issue, and presents investors with a serious chance to profit from the change in America's drug laws.

As the debt-ceiling discussion winds down in Washington and everyone laments over the meaning and mutual downside of compromise, the economy is still in trouble. But we learned some lessons along the way. Here are some key points from the debacle.

Equifax has ranked the U.S. metropolitan areas that are still suffering the most from high credit card debt, and found the majority of the areas with the highest debt-to-income ratios are located in six states. But the six might not be the ones you'd guess.